With the amount of reading I've covered, I've come across various dedications by authors, and believe me, I've skipped them all, I have never related to the emotion of dedications by an author, i.e. till today, when I sit down to write this post.
This one's for you Rhea, for making me want to love someone as immensely, deeply that you do, for being the fighter you are, and for being the angel you'll always be. I am alive today, and I owe it to you, we know that, and I'll miss you forever, but I haven't lost you, you're here deep in my heart, embedded in my soul.
Also, this one's only for you Gunjan, for I am writing this because of you, as this is the only birthday gift I could think of for someone who has everything. Also, thank you accepting me as one of your own. I promise to uphold and cherish this place.
Pardon the colors of this post, the colors are all bright, like Rhea, like her choices, her favorites.
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Date:- 15 June 2014
Venue:- The Palladium Hotel, Mumbai
Occasion :- The 4th wedding anniversary of Mr and Mrs Arthath Agarwal.
"Excuse me Ma'm, you need to get a body-scan done before you enter. We are sorry for the inconvenience, but it's a mandatory security guideline now."
Myra steps into the security rooms, raises her arms to be frisked, all the while staring at the lobby of the hotel.
It's a breathtaking sight. Done up in ornate golden hues, the high dome structures like the ones at the Dome Church Paris, are intricately carved with flowers like Claude Monet's Water Lilies. The furniture - ornate yet not opulent, classic yet not ancient, the lines all so elegant yet so simple. But it's not just the decor that enchants her, it's the feel. The crimson of the furniture blends with the golden hues to make it seem like the sun at dawn. Rising high on the horizon, wanting to break the night's monotony into splendid glory. The vast area's doesn't seem pressing, it seems more like a close-knit family living together with the same set of values, traditions, yet so different as the rest. It captivated her, it awed her, it and her presence there.
Myra slowly walked towards the ballroom, pausing at the entrance, overwhelmed with the spectacle. For this hall was decked up in all the finery, celebrating a love between a couple who are said to be cupids excess, his biases. The reality was as distant as the two poles.
Soon she sensed a frisson down her back.Her body knew and reacted immediately. The back of her neck prickled in warning. Her stomach tensed. Her muscles clenched tight in automatic response. She stopped pretending to gaze at the bold colors and people before her and let her eyes drift closed to ward off the memories. And the pain—so much pain.
But it was all in the past. It was time to look forward to today, to the man standing across the room,
Myra's heart jolted to see the tall figure she’d spotted leaning against the wall watching the dancing. Watching her.
Her heart flipped over to see him so groomed and utterly gorgeous in a snazzy pinstriped suit, the top buttons of his crisp blue shirt undone, exposing the top of his broad chest and the pendant he wore around his neck. The one with her photograph in it.
Arthath walked over to her. "You look hot Mrs. Agarwal."
'No I don't' Mr. Agarwal, I look like a bloated balloon, I don't know how you talked me into this entire celebration, when am eight months along and bloated up like a ball?' cried Myra with a down turned mouth.
"I really thought that if you'd not show up, what excuse I'd concoct this time around?"
' I did consider running away, but going through the same motions of a budget hotel, being looked down as a pregnant hooker, train tickets that don't get confirmed, travelling by the door at night, looking for a cheap accommodation in Ahmedabad, it didn't appeal, especially when the appeal is of so much money and um richness around.' Said Myra with a straight face.
Even though she was joking, a flash of vulnerability surprised her. She knew he wouldn't hurt her, wouldn't humiliate her anymore. But the fears still lingered. She suppressed it.
Arthath was rendered deep in shock for a moment. He loathed himself. But then he saw the teasing glint in Myra's eyes, and relaxed. He picked her up and twirled her. "Am sorry Mrs. Agarwal, but I have bought you for life. Didn't you read the fine print of the contract you signed 4 years back? So you could kiss me now , and that’ll be the end of it. If you run I will not come look for you, I will not pursue you. And if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will make you mine. But I will not let you run."
'Which movie was that?' teased Myra
"Taken" said Arthath in a grin that melted the cold away...
And Myra stood on her toes to kiss him.
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15th June 2011
Registrar's office
Myra's Diary
12 PMI am seriously hoping it is a joke. I mean really. That his not turning up at the airport to pick me up was actually an anomaly, he's overworked, overwrought, has to arrange things nine to a dozen for the things coming forward, of course he can't stand me up. He was pushing for it. This was his idea.
Come on lets not think so much, Mumbai's traffic sucks, he's probably stuck in there, am sure. He already has a bad habit of leaving his phone here or there, he must have left it t home hence he's not picking it up. Let me not just become the stereotypical women and start dramatising his delay, building up the soap opera of a poor jilted women, expecting viewers to start crying along with me; let me just sit back and observe the other man sitting in the room, oh man is he something! I wonder what female is the man getting married to?
And why a court marriage? His arrogance can draw women to him like magnets, his hand made Italian shoes, crease-less trousers speak of a price in which alone, could have financed my stay at Palladium Hotel, and not stay at some 2/2 bunker, where lechers stare at me, and other similar budget hotels, which think single women travelers on budgets, are honestly hookers!
So why not a great Indian wedding tamasha?
BTW The expression on his face could only be described as shock, when the woman next to him whispered something. “What do you mean she isn't coming?” he roared, even though his voice was soft, a vein of granite running through it.“It’s just... She texted me. She... Here.” She handed the phone to him and whimpered.
2 PM
So it's official, this is the day I have been waiting for, bating my breath for. It's official, I'm officially the jilted lover. Nevaan has finally stood me up. I am waiting and waiting but he did not come. Fifteen minutes became thirty. Then forty-five minutes, then an hour, and still Nevaan did not appear. “He would not do this,”
How could this be happening? How could he have done this?
But somehow the warning signs that I ignored are coming back, the bleakness in his eyes, his refusal to think of life after, his constant complaints with me.
No. No .NO.
Now would do I do? I can't go back home. I can just hear Parth.
“It had to be Nevaan Kapoor, didn't it?” Parth would sneer. His pacing would rendered him red-faced and slightly shiny, and his cold eyes would slam into her. No, no , no. I'm not going back home to Delhi. Not at all.
11.30 PM
I'm married. I should be shouting out in joy, but am numb. It's only years of practice of withholding emotions, of maintaining a facade of a controlled face that's keeping me from splintering. I would have given anything if the man could have been a man, whom I could trust with my heart. But I married a man I didn't even know the first or last name of within hours of being jilted at the altar.
My wishes of marrying a regular guy, a hardworking, loving man, who could have been my real partner is smashed. Instead I have now a selfish playboy who doesn't know the meaning of love, and had married only to save face. Well it's pointless calling the kettle black. I need a place to stay. To build back from ashes. And nothing comes without a price.
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15th June 2011
Registrars office
Arthath's Diary
11.30 AM
Rosie's phone rang, it's the sound of the instant messenger. "It's officially time to panic.” she said. I pushed my hand through my hair and looked out the window again. “The question is, what is to be done? There is an agreement, drawn up and ready to sign. The media already got a whiff of it." I've to marry today. Viana can not do this to me.
Viana, the woman I’d set my sights on so many years ago. The woman I’d spent so many years planning to marry. She had been standing there, at the end of my path, my goal, for so long that having her removed leaves me feeling lost. Aimless. She was the only woman I’d ever love. And she had left me. Along with her, she would take Palladium group's managerial position, and every piece of the plan, of my life would be broken off in chunks and scattered around my feet.
2 PM
“No, I am sure he will come,” the other girl sitting in the room said at first, when her appointed time had come and gone. The officials and para legals murmurs had turned to open, speculative conversation that drew me out of my reverie and focus on this girl. She too seemed touched by the same brush of fate as me. But the girl was something. She could not seem to move from the chair she had sunk into when the clock had struck an hour past the time she had been meant to walk down, er, the aisle. She was only staring beyond him, willing herself not to break down.
She then seems to gather herself, and with an admirable calm gets up and apologises to the registrar for wasting his time and asks for the amount of fees that has to be paid. As calmly as if she just ordered food and lost her appetite when it came! From a distance, she might have looked calm, but I read people well enough to know inside she might already have died.
It is a bad day for my pride. I need help saving a deal I’d spent years working toward because my beloved bride had decided to skip the wedding, burned. She’d left me to be with someone else. Still, pride wouldn’t see my plans come to fruition.
I have a brand new plan.
I will marry. The wedding will take place today. This wedding, would make it feel like pieces were finally fitting together. Like the pieces of my life had united into one smooth picture, the end of the plan in sight. Everything I wanted. Everything I’d worked for, in my grasp at last.
11.30 PM
A hard kind of triumph is pouring through me. I am sure that she can see it—sense it. How could she not?
Yet I feel desire flash through me, surprising me. Shocking me. I had not expected it— I should, by rights, despise her by association. For they are all the same.
My ego may assume it was my good looks that drew her to me, but I have seen world enough to know better, instead she is like all the rest, a rich man’s groupie. A gold-digging, social ladder climbing wannabe.
Everyone and everything has a price.
And I bought myself a new bride- Myra.
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15th June 2012
Myra's room
Myra's Diary
I'm now kind of thinking it would have been so cool had my family not agreed to this marriage. That they'd have remained bitter, angry and detached. I hate this lying, I hate the pretense now. They are all people, with emotions, with feelings, and I'm playing with them. All of them. My mom-in-law, who's treated me like her daughter, my sis-in-law, who worships the ground I walk on, aargh! I feel like a cheat doing this the second time around.
What had he said the day in the office last year? MARRIage?’ I had asked again, shaking my head in disbelief.‘Yes, as in vows and rings and stuff.’he'd said, ‘Marriage is a whole lot more than vows and rings and stuff,’ I had said. ‘It’s a legally binding agreement between two people who are supposed to love one another and promise to do so until death parts them.', and he'd just looked up and down and said ‘I’m not asking you to jump off the harbour bridge, Myra, just to wear my ring until such time as it is no longer necessary.’ 'It'll be a paper marriage where I'll pay you.'
Darn, why did I agree to marry the- the most arrogant, opinionated, chauvinistic smart alec I’ve ever met.
I want love, I crave love, but not by deception, not by lying. And the worst part was I was just falling under his sensual spell like every other silly woman who didn’t have a measure of self-control.I would just have to try harder to avoid becoming yet another of his conquests.Falling in love with Arthath was too dangerous.Their relationship was temporary.She had to remember that. Or she'd be so burnt, that getting up would be impossible.
The best way to not get your heart broken, is pretending you don't have one. I plan to do that. I plan to enjoy the lehnga's, the food and the music. When you have the body to flaunt it, then why not make him burn for it as much as I do? Why should boys have all the fun?
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15th June 2012
Arthath's Farmhouse
Arthath's Diary
But what did I end up with? A gold-digging, sassy, smart mouthed Myra. who told to do anything always said:- How much are you going to pay me for this little pretend gig? You should know by now I’m not the kind of girl to do anything for free...even for...erm...’ she gave him a little wink as she put her fingers up in mock quotation marks ‘“...family.”
Fuck, why didn't I realise that underneath all that was something else. Someone else. Someone who didn't let anyone get too close. Someone who didn't trust others not to exploit her or harm her. Someone who felt more than she cared to show. She wasn't a gold-digger. Sure she spent the entire money I gave her, but on gifts bought to my mother, sister, family, orphanage, chauffeur, what not. She never bought herself a dress that wasn't on sale! She bloody had even got a lawyer, made a contract- a post-nuptial agreement, where in case I divorce her, I take the blame and stay rich with all my money untouched. She only gets her character polished. And my millions-billions.
Now I'm contemplating the wedding night again tonight. Will I claim it one year down, today, am not sure?
How am I going to resist her? She was a potent cocktail of sass and sensuality. I was already drunk on looking at her. On smelling her exotic fragrance that seemed to be in every room of the house, following me, haunting me, tempting me.I'ms mesmerised by those unique eyes, transfixed by that sinfully luscious mouth and that lithe body with its sway of hips .I watch her with such raw longing. Everything about her turns me on. Her willfulness, her naughty pouts, the way she tossed her hair over her shoulders.
So it's settled. Now it's time for seduction. Even if it kills me. I'll make this marriage real, oh! so real.
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15th June 2013
Jaipur residence.
Myra's Diary
I'm such a big fool. I fell in love with a man who was incapable of feeling. Who thinks I am the lowest of low. A man who can't face his own feelings.
When he had kissed me for the first time out on the dance floor. There were people all around us, the crush of bodies intense. And I let them push me into him, let them drive me against him so that I could feel the hard heat of his muscles against my chest.
When I was pressed against him, I looked up, angled my head toward his.I needed this. More than air. It didn't matter what happened tomorrow, or in the month leading up after that days wedding, not if I didn't survive that night. I had survived.
Deep down, the thing I feared most was what might come the morning after. I don’t know how to do more, or whether he would want to do more…or if he would even care about the consequences. But every time he looked at me with that mixture of passion and admiration, I come a foot closer to crossing that inevitable line.
In retrospect I knew I had behaved like a madwoman that day. Temporary insanity had gripped me from the minute my whole world had come crashing down around me. I had screamed, I had yelled, I had cursed and he had stood there like a granite rock battered by stormy seas—essentially untouched by my anger, my tears and my pleas for listening to the explanation.
I had thrown Arthath the gauntlet but he had essentially abandoned me. After his heartless distrust, and assuming the worst, the force of his counter-attack has almost destroyed me and he has walked away without a backward glance. He had reacted as if three years of marriage, and what I have honestly assumed was happiness, meant absolutely nothing to him.
I am through him. Through for life.
I don't need him. I don't need another man around my life. Some people are meant to be in cold forever.
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15th June 2013
Flight 6E237, Jaipur to Kolkata
Arthath's Diary
I had not thought it possible to trust life enough to care for someone unreservedly, but somehow Myra had invaded my emotional firewall, finding a way to my heart that no one had ever done before. I told her bluntly and rather clinically I would not offer her a declaration of love but what if what she’d said was true? That I was unable to recognise my true feelings for fear of life hurting me the way it had in the past?
Each time I made love with her I learned more about her. The way she expressed herself physically was an indication of the passionate emotion she kept hidden away.
She was finally letting me in. Revealing everything about her past. About her pain. Why she was the way she was. Whenever I thought of her as that terrified young teenager, traumatised beyond belief and yet hiding it behind a mask of come-close-to-me-at-your-peril, I felt cold to my bones.
Why was I such a fool to not see it earlier? Why did I have to accuse her of being the gold-digging social climber bitch? Was I so ready to push her out that I was subconsciously looking for evidence?
Why did I not ask her the reasons for forging my signature? Why did I just assume the worse and said all that? My face still flames at the memory, and all I want to do is to drown myself in a bottle of a potent cognac, but here I am going on a loose chase to find my wife, who I erred, badly, and fell in love, madly.
Because I know that was the only word to describe the agony in my chest, the heat of it, the impossible weight of all that I had lost. I was not ill, as I had first assumed. I simply ached. I could not sleep. I was irritable by day and my head was a vivid mess—and she was the only thing I saw.
She was saving my stupid little sister from the mess she jumped into. She forged my signature to get money to bail out Piya before the media, mom-dad or me got a whiff of it, she used it to settle the scores of the past, to create an alibi for Piya. All to protect her. Not to rob me.
But I am not a man who wallowed—nor one who ever backed down from a challenge, even if the challenge is of my own making. I had more money than I could ever spend. I came from nothing, and now I have everything. And none of it means anything to me without Myra. I can not live without her scowl, her defiant chin, her thoughtful brown eyes. And I won't.
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